Designing systems that survive scale

A design system is easy to start and hard to keep alive. The first version is a triumph; the version that still works two years and forty contributors later is the real achievement.

We bias toward fewer, sturdier components with sensible defaults over a sprawling library of options. Constraints are a feature — they make the right thing the easy thing.

Documentation lives next to the code, governance is lightweight but real, and every component earns its place by being used in more than one product.